


Iron Will

by cornershelf



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mindfuck, Psychological Trauma, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:29:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23712274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornershelf/pseuds/cornershelf
Summary: The Shape has always been deeply fascinated by fear, the way it manifests into screams and panicked thrashing and desperate cries for help. Then he comes across Jake Park, who does none of these things and instead takes every cut and stab without a sound.But The Shape knows that everyone experiences fear one way or another. If his knife doesn't work, he'll just have to find something else that does.
Relationships: Michael Myers/Jake Park
Comments: 32
Kudos: 297





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jake's perks Iron Will and Calm Spirit got me thinking.
> 
> Must be a bummer for psycho killers to go stabby on someone who doesn't scream. Super anti-climactic.

He always kills Jake Park first, given the chance. There's no point in dragging out the chase if his prey refuses to suffer for it. If the fear and pain don't build up in the back of his throat until he's groaning in agony like his fellow survivors, then little satisfaction could be gained from keeping him around longer than necessary.

The irony in that though, is that the silence that makes Jake Park such a dull and uninteresting target is also what makes him one of the hardest to catch. Despite The Shape's indifference, he still ends up wasting time and effort on an unsatisfying chase which then leads to an equally unsatisfying kill.

It's a single trial that changes that. Turns things around and renews his interest in the young survivor.

Dwight Fairfield is the first sacrifice of the trial. His chattering teeth and trembling limbs are such textbook displays of fear that it's fascinating to watch until the Entity finally takes him.

Feng Min is the second, with so much courage packed into such a small body, racing to save the others every chance she gets. But it only lasts until her third hook. Then, all the courage drains out of her with a shriek of terror as dark tendrils pierce through her heart.

Laurie Strode is the third. His own personal favorite. No matter how much she knows about him, no matter how intertwined their fates seem to be, she is always, _always_ afraid of him. More than the other killers and perhaps more than the Entity itself.

Jake Park is the last, but The Shape doesn't bother hooking him. He doesn't tremble and he doesn't scream. Doesn't even look at The Shape with the fear he rightfully deserves.

So The Shape simply crouches over his crumpled form, waits for him to bleed to death, and wonders. How broken must a person be to lose all sense of fear and panic even at knife-point? Possibly just about as broken as The Shape himself.

Jake quietly rides the pain out, no sound escaping grit teeth. The Shape curiously studies him, puts a hand against his bloodied jaw to turn his head and get a better look.

But the moment The Shape's gloved hand makes contact with the side of his face, Jake tenses. He lets out a sharp breath.

Strange.

The Shape loosens his grip on Jake's jaw and, experimentally, drags his fingertips down the crook of his neck. Jake's eyes grow wide, the rise and fall of his chest quickening. It's the closest to fear that The Shape has ever seen him.

Now _that's_ interesting.

He moves his hand upward, traces the curve of a cheekbone.

And that's when the game changes. Jake makes a sound.

"No!" He tries to shove The Shape away, arms coming up to shield himself. It's far from the cries of help that The Shape is used to, but it's enough.

He grabs both wrists easily with his free hand. As he watches the panic build up behind Jake's eyes, he remembers that fear comes in different shapes for different people. While the others whimper at the swipe of his knife, at flesh sliced open and torn apart, this particular survivor is a bit different. But that's alright. The Shape is willing to adjust.

And as he drags his thumb slowly over the young survivor's chapped bottom lip and listens to his panicked breaths, The Shape revels in knowing that he's just found what Jake Park is afraid of.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the warnings. Non-con and other potentially disturbing themes ahead.

The Shape likes to take his time. To watch. There's something uniquely magnetic about the surge of adrenaline survivors seem to get when there's only one generator left to repair. And when he finally begins the hunt, any semblance of hope is just as easily replaced with dread.

Every trial, without fail. Hope, and subsequently, dread. Human nature at its most predictable.

But when the Entity summons him to Lampkin Lane for his most recent trial, he neither watches nor bides his time. Right from the get-go, he starts hunting for survivors with the efficiency of a bloodhound.

Nea Karlsson. Jeff Johansen. Meg Thomas. Thrice-hooked and sacrificed within minutes.

Playtime can wait. For the moment, he has a theory to test and Jake Park is conveniently in the trial with him.

He hits him once to slow him down but not completely incapacitate him. Jake tries to lead the chase to the basement of the house, farthest from the hook. An old survivor's trick, The Shape knows. A last resort for when they're planning to wriggle out of the killer's grasp.

It's a mistake, of course. The Shape has no intention of picking him up or taking him to a hook.

He steps forward, cornering Jake until he’s pressed flush against the wall. The gash across his back must sting from the pressure but he knows how well Jake can take pain.

What _really_ sets him off is when The Shape lays his knife down and rolls his sleeves up.

"You win. Let’s get this over with,” Jake says, voice calm for the most part. But The Shape hears the familiar hitch in his breath. Which means he remembers.

"Hook me."

Which means he's afraid.

"You win."

Not yet. It's not a win until he knows firsthand what makes each survivor tick, what renders them senseless with abject horror.

The Shape presses his hands against sweat-covered skin, applying just the slightest pressure on the rabbit-fast pulse at Jake's neck. Then, he leans forward and, slowly, intently, rests the forehead of his white mask against Jake's.

“No,” Jake turns his head to the side, keeping as much distance as he can between them.

This close, he can almost smell the rising panic, the discomfort as he trails his palm down the front of Jake's jacket. And when he slips his hand under the waistband of Jake's pants, the survivor starts thrashing in earnest. Jake grabs at his arm, tries to pry it away.

"No, you win! Hook me!" Jake knees him once, twice, but The Shape kicks his feet apart. Jake struggles to push him off but it’s an ultimately futile effort when he can easily keep Jake's much slighter form in place.

"This isn't how it works, the trial, you win! This isn't… _Get away from me!"_

He wraps a hand around Jake's flaccid cock, listens to panicked babbling that he’d never once been able to wrest from Jake, until now.

“Hook me,” he pleads, eyes squeezed shut as The Shape touches him.

It’s a long time before Jake’s body responds, fear overtaking all other physical reactions. But The Shape is nothing if not patient.

Jake’s wild thrashing dies down eventually, hands curling into fists and gripping onto the front of his coveralls. Then, he hears Jake’s breaths turn ragged, sees the flush on his face, and feels him stiffen with reluctant arousal.

He adjusts the pace of his strokes, tightens his fingers, drags it out carefully, methodically, until Jake is shaking with it, legs buckling underneath himself. The Shape keeps him upright.

“You win,” Jake says, almost listlessly, voice hoarse. “You win. You win.” Jake repeats it, like a mantra, in between anguished whimpers. The Shape memorizes the sound.

He watches Jake come apart with a strangled groan, face contorted in something like pain. Another fine example of human nature and its predictability. Drowning in fear and distress, yet still helpless against the hold of base pleasures and bodily instincts.

He wipes his hand on the front of Jake’s jacket, steps back, and watches his shivering form crumple to the basement floor. Then, he rolls his sleeves back down and retrieves his knife.

He decides not to hook him or deal the killing blow. Instead, he walks away. After all, Jake was right. He’d already won.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wellp, this has become much longer than originally planned. *sweats nervously*
> 
> Warnings in this chapter include: mentions of past sexual abuse, childhood trauma, and more graphic violence. Please heed the warnings!

It's a strange thing, fear. How it spreads through the body like poison, how it cripples and renders a person all but useless.

Jake watches, paralyzed where he stands, as Nea falls. Michael Myers strikes her down easily and Jake doesn't block the blow, doesn't protect his friend like he usually does. He doesn't move an inch.

Ahead of them, he sees Laurie and Dwight just past the exit gate, looking back with worried gazes. Jake hopes they don't go back for him. He wants them to run to the safety of the campfire because when Michael hoists Nea onto her last hook, he knows it's too late.

He still can't move.

Michael looks at him, his unnervingly emotionless white mask tilted slightly to the side. And when Michael’s bloodied hand comes up to the side of Jake's face, a wave of nausea hits him. He feels wetness across his cheek, smells the sharp iron scent. But it’s the heat of Michael’s skin that makes his vision spin, makes his legs feel weak.

He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting but when Michael simply drives the knife’s blade deep into his sternum, Jake feels only relief. Pain is more welcome than the other kinds of torture Michael is capable of.

-

“What the hell was that, Park? You just stood there!” Nea says, back at the campfire.

She wraps her arms around her middle, hunched over from the phantom pain of being sacrificed. She's covered in cuts and bruises which won't heal until the next trial. Jake keeps his gaze on the ground, overcome with guilt every time he sees her discomfort.

“It happens to the best of us,” Laurie says, sitting down next to Jake in the dirt.

Nea scoffs. “He could’ve taken a hit and you know it.”

“Jake always takes the most hits for us and _you_ know it,” Laurie says, voice calm despite Nea’s rising tone. “It was just a mistake, this one time.”

Laurie turns to look at Jake, concern written in the furrow of her brow. But before she has the chance to say anything, Jake gets on his feet and walks away from the campfire.

-

He can no longer count the number of times he messes up on a trial.

Nearly each one ends up the same way: his entire body freezing up when he sees Michael, his mind running wild with all the ways Michael can torment him, and then, finally, resignation as Michael corners him.

He feels utterly useless. Fear keeps paralyzing him, making him dead weight to his fellow survivors. The knowledge of it makes shame lance through him more painfully than the blade of Michael’s kitchen knife.

-

“You've been different since that trial on Lampkin Lane. When you escaped from the hatch. What happened?” Laurie finally asks one night, having followed him into the woods surrounding the campfire, away from the others.

Jake doesn’t answer and instead asks her a question of his own. “Why did he kill those people, back where you’re from? What did Michael Myers want with them?”

Her lips thin as he avoids the question but she doesn’t push. “They used to say he was just pure evil. No other emotion, just a primitive drive to cause suffering wherever he goes.”

“But you don’t agree,” Jake guesses.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe he _is_ evil but I don’t think he’s completely devoid of emotion. I guess I always thought he seemed... angry.”

Jake doesn’t know what he’d hoped to achieve by asking. None of it is enough to explain anything, much less erase the memory of Michael’s hands on him.

“Whatever he is, you should know it’s alright to be afraid of him. We all are,” Laurie says, eyes looking earnestly into his as she continues, “But if there’s one good thing that’s ever come from these goddamned trials, it’s that he can’t kill us here. Remember that. He can’t really hurt anyone ever again.”

He nods, offers her a tired but hopefully reassuring half-smile. “You’re right. Thank you.”

He appreciates her effort. Her words might have helped, if only pain had been Jake’s problem.

-

Michael’s touch is like fire, all rational thought engulfed in flames as long fingers trace the side of Jake’s face. It burns through his grasp of the present, takes him back in time, bringing old memories to the surface.

He remembers the family manor, always more rigid than usual when they’re expecting guests. He remembers his father, always expecting them to behave, to look pristine, to be absolutely perfect children. He remembers his father’s business partners, always visiting with their wide smiles and dark eyes and lingering touches.

“Jake, run! You can make it!” he hears Claudette yell, seeming far, far away. The trial bell tolls loudly with the exit gate open and the world around them slowly swallowed in embers. He can see David and Dwight pulling Claudette out through the exit, telling her it’s too late. Jake finds comfort in their safety, at least.

Michael pays them no mind, only keeps his hands on Jake, watching him, always watching him.

Jake remembers an old man in a stiff suit looming over him, touching him, telling him to _be quiet, boy, you don’t want to upset your daddy, do you?_ And he remembers returning the touches. _That’s it, such a good boy, it’ll be over much faster if you do as I say._

The memory resounds in his head. _It’ll be over much faster if you do as I say, it’ll be over much faster--_

In a moment of desperation, Jake reaches between them, lays his palms against the front of Michael’s coveralls. _It’ll be over much faster like this._ Jake trails his hands lower, lower--

Michael goes completely still. His breathing stops and his entire hulking figure tenses.

And suddenly, Jake feels a sharp pain across his face. Michael shoves Jake away, pulls his knife back for another strike. Jake falls into the dirt from the force of it, face and chest bleeding. Michael is on him in an instant, pinning his body down, rearing his knife back. Michael stabs him again, and again, and again.

Unexpectedly, his touch only seems to have offended Michael. It’s the last thing he thinks as his vision turns dark.

-

_I guess I always thought he seemed angry_ , Laurie had said.

His father's old business partner had looked at Jake with filthy _want._ Now that Jake thinks about it, he finds none of that in Michael's almost clinical touches, in the curious tilt of his head; even on that trial back at Lampkin Lane.

And then, in the most recent trial, there was something strange about the way Michael had bristled when Jake returned his touch, the way he'd pushed Jake away. He'd seemed _angry_. Disgusted.

"Why didn't you run?" Claudette asks, as she dabs her mixture of healing herbs against his wounded chest. "You could've made it."

Jake doesn't know where to even begin an explanation, and he's not quite sure he wants anyone to know. So he stays quiet.

"I'm sorry I didn't go back for you," Claudette continues.

"Don't apologize," Jake says. "You did the right thing. I'm glad you got out."

"You would've gone back, if it was me. You always go back for us."

Jake thinks about that for a moment. Back then, he would've done just that, without a second thought. But now, against Michael, he wasn't so sure.

"Maybe I wouldn't have," he answers honestly.

-

The trial in Shelter Woods goes bad only minutes after it begins. Within such a small and constrictive area, Michael sacrifices Feng Min, David and Meg before they even finish their third generator.

But when Michael predictably corners Jake in the shack, the fear doesn't cloud his mind as badly as it usually does. Jake has a theory, and he needs answers.

This close, he sees the strip of bare skin just under the edge of Michael's white mask, above the unbuttoned collar of his blue coveralls. Jake summons all his courage to reach up, and with a shaking hand, gently traces the line of Michael's collar bone.

Michael tenses, just like last time. In a blur of inhuman speed, Michael holds his hand above his head and stabs the knife through it to pin it against the wood.

Jake grits his teeth through the feeling of torn flesh and ligament. But a small bubble of hope rises to the surface. He was right, after all. Michael was a different beast from those of his childhood.

"You don't want me." Jake huffs out a disbelieving laugh as the blood trickles down his arm. "You're _repulsed_ by me."

Michael closes in, until they're flush against each other. As if to prove him wrong, Michael rests their foreheads together again, like he did back at the basement of the Strode residence.

It's not enough to fool Jake this time. Testing his newfound knowledge, Jake tilts his head up, presses his lips against the rubber mouth of Michael's mask.

Michael jerks back as if he'd been burnt.

"You hate this just as much as I do," Jake says, dumbfounded by his own proven theory.

Michael's shoulders tense up, muscles coiled and ready to attack. He's angry again.

Jake feels like he's winning, for once. Even as Michael pulls the knife out of Jake's hand and drives it deep under his ribs, Jake feels the thrill of victory.

Blood gathering in his mouth, he wheezes out, "You don't _want_ me. Not like that. You only want me to be afraid of you."

Michael rips his knife out and drives it in again. But Jake has always been able to take the pain better than anyone.


End file.
